Catherine MacLellan is a second-generation singer/songwriter: the Prince Edward Island native's late father, 1970s Canadian country star Gene MacLellan, released several successful albums of his own and also wrote
Anne Murray's signature song "Snowbird." On her second solo album,
MacLellan charts a somewhat different path, favoring a form of AAA folk-pop closer in spirit to the likes of
Dar Williams and Patti Griffin.
Church Bell Blues is so relentlessly polite and pathologically low-key that it takes a couple listens to recognize just how good
MacLellan really is. Her voice has a husky warmth and an easy, conversational style that suits the casually poetic slice-of-life lyrics of songs like the haunting "There You Are." The simple arrangements, consisting almost entirely of her own acoustic guitar and the electric and steel guitars of her producer James Phillips, are almost too simple, so that the occasional filigree like the heavy echo and twang of "The Long Way Home" has a greater impact than one might expect. But the songs are melodically solid in their own soft folk way, and as easy as it is to use
Church Bell Blues as unobtrusive background music, they don't dissolve upon closer listening. Fuller arrangements and a little more production wouldn't have hurt, but the album gets by nicely without them. ~ Stewart Mason